July 02, 2015

On How the Battle with Infertility is Never Over

We are so blessed that we were able to conceive him on our first round of IVF.

We are so blessed that we were able to freeze four embryos.

We are so blessed that God provided the money we needed to conceive Cai when we needed it.

We are so thankful for the amazing ways God has worked in our life as a family.

Our battle with infertility has changed so much because of what the Lord has chosen to do in our lives, but I'm quickly realizing that it is not gone.

We have four frozen embryos. In other words, we have four frozen babies. We plan to attempt to conceive all four of these babies by doing two frozen embryo transfers (FET) with two embryos each. These will cost around $5,000 each, give or take a thousand.

We originally planned to do our first FET when Cai was just over a year old, approximately five or six months from now. Then life happened. Steve lost his job (through no fault of his own), and although he has found a new one (praise the Lord), our income is less than half of what it was when we did IVF. This means that we really have no idea when we will be able to do a FET. It makes me anxious as I turned thirty this year and can feel that internal clock ticking.

On the other side of things, despite the fact that I am still breastfeeding (side note: breastfeeding and cloth diapering have been a huge blessing with the lack of income we dealt with for awhile. Basically, we didn't have to spend anything on Cai!), my cycle has returned. This is nearly miraculous as I never had a normal cycle ever and was wondering if it would ever even bother coming back. And not only has it returned, but it is more normal than it has been since I was in high school. Kind of crazy.

So now this presents a new dilemma. If pregnancy has helped to kick start my body into being closer to normal (apparently pregnancy can help with PCOS), and because we will not be able to afford a FET for at least another year or more, do we consider trying to get pregnant naturally?

Again, that clock is ticking and the younger I am the easier conceiving could be, so if we were to try to conceive naturally, now would be the time.

But what if we do get pregnant, then do to FETs and end up with six children? Are we okay with that?

Or what if we don't try, wait to do the FETs, and end up not getting pregnant with any, and miss any possible window to conceive naturally.

I mean, I know that ultimately God has a plan for the size of our family, and he will give us the strength to handle whoever comes our way, whether it be just Cai, five more, or a gaggle of adopted kids.

But these are things we have to think through that the average couple does not.

We can't just say, "Let's see what happens," and throw out the condoms, and that's it. We have four little lives waiting in limbo and one already in full swing who need to be considered.

I don't know.

Please don't get me wrong; I'm not complaining. We have been blessed beyond our imaginations with Cai. I guess I'm just amazed with how much infertility still weighs on us. How much it still affects us despite four babies waiting for us, despite the fact that our infertility issues could potentially be disappearing, despite that fact that there is a precious little man napping in his crib right now.